Parking Lot Makes Way for Housing at 401 Grove

We received a tip from a reader that the public parking lot on the southwest corner of Gough & Grove is no longer accepting monthly customers. No, not that parking lot. The other parking lot.

After speaking with someone who works at Tower Valet Parking Inc., we learned that the space will soon(ish) be cleared to make way for new apartments.

Apartments? We had no idea. But as it turns out, this plan has been in the works for a while.

In October 2009, CurbedSF first reported that "two buildings totaling 70 dwelling units" were going to be built across from Citizen Cake (now, Boxing Room). Since it's been 2.5 years, we wanted to see if any progress had been made.

parking lot from gough

We reached out to the San Francisco Planning Department and spoke to Kevin Guy who informed us "the project is now moving through its site/building permit approval process."

He wasn't sure about the timeline since that's determined by the project sponsor, Ivy Grove Partners LLC, but said "the Planning Commission approved a development for this site in July 2011."

According to the Executive Summary submitted on July 8, 2011, two buildings will be constructed in this space: "a five‐story building... with ground‐floor retail spaces" and a smaller building with five townhouse units with their own ground-floor entries.

The larger building will have 63 units, with the majority consisting of 1 or 2 bedrooms. In addition to all the housing, the ground floor will be reserved for commercial space, and off-street parking spaces will be provided for residents as well.

After years of planning, the transition from parking lot to apartment building is beginning to take place. Once we hear more details about the proposed schedule, we'll let you know.

In the meantime, how do you feel about this project? Do we need more housing or is public parking a larger concern?